Bitcoin Forum

I have today spoken to e-bay about protection for bitcoin sellers .

The representative outlined their concerns with digital items including ,games ,antivirus software .
They can offer protection for physical goods because they know how to track postage and that the buyers actually received the goods bought .
But any virtual,digital goods are impossible to track so they blanket do not protect these transactions .
You can put up adverts and sell but if you have a dispute or your advert reported it is likely to end in your adverts being taken down and a warning of some sort issued .

I explained that unlike other digital items the protocol behind bitcoin is an official record of every transaction of every bitcoin transfered from one address to another and that they could turn paypal and ebay into an acceptable place to sell bitcoin simply by understanding and accepting blockchain.info as an official record of bitcoin transactions .

I explained that if they implemented a policy that officially recognised blockchain info as a receipt and proof of transaction they could protect buyer and seller .
paypal protects buyer .
Blockchain protect seller .

I also explained that the other option was to sell on localbitcoins.com but they need you to have a margin of one bitcoin to trade there which currently stands at around $900 /600pounds which is to much for small players .E-bay which has currently no minimum would therefore be preferable with a minor tweek in policy .

I would like the help of the community to turn paypal and ebay into bitcoin friendly environments .

The more people that phone ebay /paypal asking for blockchain info to be recognised as an official form of ledger to prove the seller transfered the coin to the address supplied by the buyer ,the more likely they are to implement this policy .
All we need is people to pick up the phone and request blockchain info be official proof of transaction .
I do not think their is a big conspiracy against bitcoin they currently do not know how to track transactions ,please let them know .

Thank you peeps .

they don like bit coin

would it be possible to draft a sample letter detailing all of the pertinent blockchain.info points which the community members could copy from this thread?Lazy noobs with ebay/paypal accounts like me could then customize the sample draft and send it to Ebay/Paypal customer support associated with a support ticket and follow up with a phone call.

Ebay is seriously missing out on not implementing this for Cryptos. I'd just leave them be as no amount of emails will ever get the message through to the head honchos about implementing this.

I have just spoken to paypal .
The representative was not aware of blockchain info .
I explained the way it works by recording all legit transactions and the confirmation process .

I suggested people verify a wallet address with them to allow them to offer protection to buyers or seller of bitcoin and purchasing of goods through a verified bitcoin wallet all confirmed by blockchain.info .

Paypal are open to policy changes/ additions and this information will be put forward .

If there is enough interest they will look to work with Blockchain info .

So it is now up to us to communicate with them .

A simple e-mail or phone call  and every one will add to blockchain being adopted as an officially recognised ledger for them to prove transactions happened.

We in bitcoin know its an official global ledger of transactions ,e-bay or paypal do not ,please support this and maybe soon ebay/paypal could be friendly to us .

I think it's great what your doing, I'm not too concerned about the eBay side of things but would love to be able to easily buy BTC with PayPal.

I could see BTC increasing quite rapidly if PayPal changed their policies in this regard.

I'm sure if ebay did change it polices, PP would follow suit. Buying Bitcoin on ebay would still be pointless otherwise.

Two members of their executive staff including the CEO are on record with supportive statements regarding Bitcoin. PayPal was created to decrease market friction with internet transactions within the system. It would be hypocritical and silly of them to acknowledge Bitcoin.

The simpler the letter the more they will understand .

Just include in the letter that paypal is being used to scam people out of bitcoins .
Blockchain,info has an official ledger of all transactions .
Therefore to close this scam down and protect bitcoin sellers could they look into officially recognising Blockchain info as legitimate proof that bitcoin seller actually transfered his bitcoin to the buyers supplied bitcoin address  to eliminate scam chargebacks .

If you talk to paypal ask if they would consider adding the option to verify a bitcoin wallet with them to purchase items ,and that they could use blockchain in the event of a dispute .The buyer and seller would need verified wallets .

I just want to say that even though you may get a response of "we do not allow the sale of digital " from any communications ,each effort will add weight to the overall community bitcoin adoption .

Much like every pound /$ saved in bitcoin takes 15 away from the banks power .

I doubt they will care. To them bitcoins is a competitor in offering money transmitting services for a fee incomparable to there's. Don't expect them to facilitate it's exchange.

They can still take their fees. Better at least to attempt to adapt than to die slowly.

Bitcoin is paypals worst nightmare. There's no way paypal will ever support bitcoin trading. F*&^ Paypal.

Two factual errors in OP:

• Localbitcoins has no minimum of 1BTC. You can buy and sell smaller amounts, too. I currently have my offers running although I "only" have 950mɃ there. I sold as little as 20mɃ, so I doubt there is such a limit on the localbitcoins' side.
• The blockchain is the authority in bitcoin and it is on every computer that runs a full client such as bitcoin-qt. blockchain.info is a for profit company that has no authority over transactions, although they make it easy for hobby projects to gather information about bitcoin and its blockchain.

I will check point one but from what I was lead to beleive you can sell as small amount as you like but must hold one bitcoin on the exchange at all times .Will provide evidence directly from localbitoin directly either way .

Cannot see what you are correcting in my initial statement . I stated blockchain info can be used by paypal/ebay as an easy to access public record of any transaction  .What are the factual errors please ?
Is Blockchain not the best way for these companies to officially verify transactions ?

You also said:
implying you confuse blockchain.info (https://blockchain.info) with the blockchain (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blockchain) bitcoin uses as its database of all transactions. The former is a company you mentioned while the latter is the official record of bitcoin transactions.

ebay could host digital goods themselves and then tracking of who downloaded what is taken care of by itself. with bitcoin they could accept coins and when payment goes thru release the coin to purchaser to a supplied address

I see what you mean ,I was more implying that at the moment none of these companies are aware of a ledger .
Since blockchain info is a public blockchain and have a easily searchable database I was thinking they would be the place to go for ebay and paypal to use as their official go to record to prove a bitcoin transaction happened to close down the current paypal scam being used on legit bitcoin sellers .

We all have the ability to download the blockchain but the problem with such as ebay or paypal is they need to work with a company which is a hurdle for our decentralised individual versions of the blockchain in bitcoin-qt. So when I say official I mean a none bitcoin companies official .

If there are any reason anyone knows of, that this would not be appropriate for them for any reason please speak.

In my conversation they do not know what a bitcoin address is let alone how to generate one ,explaining that you can download a wallet anywere but have 100's of addresses seemed to be complicating the conversation so to keep it simple I kept to a wallet and one address .

Their quote is that they do not support digital /virtual goods being sold since they have no way of tracking them,therefore cannot offer buyer/seller protection .

I feel baby steps are required ,if we could focus on them just using blockchain info as their officially accepted  proof to at least prove a seller actually sent the coins to the address supplied by the purchaser this would be one big step for bitcoin.While giving bitcoin sellers some security .

There is definitely not a limit of 1BTC on localbitcoin. I bought 0.58 BTC on there just the other day. It was even "escrowed" by buyer.

The way I understand escrow, is that localbitcoins holds the seller's BTC until he confirms that the transaction has been successful.

It seems like a safe place to do business if you ask me. I noticed that some sellers even accepted paypal payments.

Its probably just a matter of time until we can pay for goods on Ebay with bitpay or something like that.

No issue with buying just 1BTC to sell as far as I am aware

are you sure ?

Minimum balance limitations
 You need to have at least the advertisement minimum sell limit and 1 BTC available in your LocalBitcons.com wallet.


This is a copy paste from localbitcoin.com

Here is a link :-
https://localbitcoins.com/guides/how-to-sell-bitcoins-online

the text is half way down.

Paypal was genius, but constrained by working within the existing system. They have done fantastically in that regard. But to keep their licenses they must keep chargeback attempts below some threshold -- idr, but it is really small.


This is undoubtedly their plan. See previous comment.

Also, I may or may not have had the good fortune to be aware of what a certain ex-Paypal founder thinks about it as well. If Bitcoin is interesting to him, that should mean something too. Soon, Hyperloop transit links crowdfunded by Bitcoin early adopters, where the accepted payment is RFID bitcoin tokens just like the Pasmo system in Japan (you buy Pasmo at the gate if you don't have one). I'm not kidding, feel free to PM me regarding my plans on this if you are pretty "rich" in bitcoins.

ebay - paypal - credit card - bank

if ebay accepted bitcoins to be sold and offered seller protection, then paypal (separate office building) would still charge back in favour of customer, say thing their card details or password was stolen, even if delivery of product was proven, customer simply says they were not delivery recipient

if paypal changed their policies and put all bitcoin trades in favour of sellers, whether the customer claims theft, fraud, or hacking. the customer would then claim through their credit card company, which works in favour of customers, forcing paypal to then refund from the seller.

if credit card companies decided to not chargeback any paypal transactions, then the customer would go to the bank and claim through them.

in the end the scammers will always prefer to go through paypal as they know they have more then one company they can use to scam their refund through.

the short answer to all of this is to just avoid paypal/ebay if your a seller, no matter what you try you WILL be screwed over atleast 50% of the time

For now I just want to show Blockchain.info as a reliable source to prove bitcoin actually was sent to the buyer .It will be a big hurdle crossed if people could simply contact them pointing this fact out .Then we can possibly add other obstacles.

Try Litecoinlocal if you wanna sell but are a small guy, there is no limit on how much LTC you need to have on your account in order to sell

FYI, in the interim, and I don't think it'll be necessary much longer, so I'll give away a "trade secret" here that we use at my company -- we take PayPal as payment for basically a brokerage service. (We do a lot more than this; this is perhaps 0.5% of our revenue, in this format. Probably less. If you can use PayPal, you usually can use a credit or debit card, or a bank transfer.) You don't pay us for bitcoins, you pay us to acquire them for you. Much like a lawyer could accept PayPal, so do we. Our fee happens to vary based on the market rate, but that is immaterial.

The contract you sign basically says, you agree to pay us X dollars for our services. Our service guarantees Y bitcoins in return, a time window for delivery (or sometimes a price range instead, so basically a limit order), and a location for delivery, which is a 3-way P2SH address for added security. You either get 2 of the 3 keys, and we have one, or you, we, and an arbiter get 1. The arbiter was more used in the beginning. Now we do more 2-of-3 P2SH. But anyway. At that time, you sign the second part of the contract where you agree you have received the services at the requested terms. No PayPal chargebacks possible.

Then we turn over our part of the key and you can go on your merry way. Note, the only risk to the buyer, is that we oddly decide to hold onto one of a 2-of-3 P2SH key, and neither of us can spend the coins; this is the same as if you wanted to do a chargeback and again, neither of us can spend the coins (this was the purpose of the arbiter, in case the market ate complete shit and the buyer felt it was worth it to skip the whole thing).

Yes, we still do this, so if you really are desperate to purchase BTC with PayPal, feel free to PM me.

If you want to sell on ebay ,they stated that they only cover physical items ,you are free to offer services or digital items but in the case of a dispute or claim you will not be covered and could receive a warning .

I want the community to specifically point out that blockchain info is a bitcoin trusted public source that provide a searchable database to close the chargeback scam down on bitcoin transactions .

This service would be tracable unlike other digital /virtual items services ,in effect exclude bitcoin from this blanket ban they currently have .

You know, that's actually really sensible, logical, and a smart way of implementing bitcoin into eBay and Paypal. I seriously doubt they view bitcoins and crypto-currency as profit-stealing or whatever you nutjobs claim. They just want to ensure protection for buyers, which is sensible. So by making bitcoin a more secure form of currency and providing enough evidence and proof to them that it can be used sensibly, they might just re-format their policies

That makes sense. But there are many countries with regulations pertaining to currency exchange. Ebay may want to avoid becoming involved in disputes with various central banks until Bitcoin becomes a more established currency.

Good luck.  I'm sure you can convince Paypal to further bitcoin adoption and kill their own business as a result.

I like all the euphemisms, they are trying to destroy Bitcoin and all of it's users plain and simple. Had they embraced Bitcoin to the fullest its value would triple overnight.

I'am not going to convince anyone ,the community needs to do that .

Yes that's why you offer only contracted services. You can prove you did that, easily: Contract states I will facilitate delivery of X BTC to address xxxxx and that verification via [address at blockchain.info] is considered proof of completion of services; and that further, the address stated is brand-new and generated by the customer, and the customer certifies that they and no one else has access to the key. That sort of thing. They can charge back all they want but it will never fly.

They will not officially accept blockchain info as proof even if you put it in the terms .
You have already broken their terms by providing a service .
Their exact words to me were that "e-bay is for the sale of physical items only "
What I'am asking is for thecommunity to contact them to make Blockchain info their official proof ,we can put what we want in our terms but it needs to be officially recognised by e-bay or your flying by the seat of your pants if a dispute arises .

Is selling Paper Wallets fine then? What I don't get about the proof of delivery is anybody could ship you a letter or a xbox box full of bricks with a tracking number, but all that proves is they sent something not what's in the box. At least with the blockchain there is proof of exactly what was sent and received.

I purchased paper wallets that were advertised to have 1 BTC each, but they had 0 each.  The person reviewing the case apparently ignored the blockchain information showing absolute proof that the wallets had 0 balance.  Don't expect the eBay dispute reviewer to use the blockchain info, or even basic logic when deciding on the case.  I am not using eBay & DEFINITELY not PayPal for BTC transactions.

Companies, smaller/bigger start to understand that accepting bitcoin payments is like a free viral marketing for them.

This backs up what I was told .
They do not understand that the blockchain exists let alone know how to use it ,if we can educate them ,maybe there is some hope ,the more that contact them with this info the more chance there is .
Unless like lots believe there is a conspiracy against Bitcoin .
I find people fear what they do not understand ,ebay are no different .
If they understand that their paypal could incorporate bitcoin wallets into their format then maybe we could make progress.

I think they know of BTC, considering the CEO of PayPal has talked about it in interviews, but their company policy needs to change in order for them to be a good place to exchange BTC.  Until their policy changes, any disputes will be decided based upon their existing policy, which states digital delivery goods are not allowed.  They claim to have no way to verify delivery, but of course they could easily with Bitcoins.  Each party posts the address they are sending from/receiving the BTC, and then verify the BTC went where it should go.  No other proof necessary.  They said sales of software,mp3's, etc were impossible to verify, so they made the policy to outlaw all digital delivery goods.

Yeah, FYI this is not what I was advocating. Guess my business model is secure after all, since I spelled it out and it's still a mystery.

Your model is secure ,but understand that paypal and e-bay will side with the buyer regardless, since they have not officially said any were that blockchain information will 100% prove you sent bitcoin anywere .
The only place you could stand a chance is in court ,but you need very deep pockets to do this trust me .So in the end right or wrong ,people with average income lose always in the legal framework .

Well, my pockets aren't empty, so that helps my confidence. That said, again: the contract doesn't rely on anyone reading blockchain to determine proof of Bitcoin delivery. The blockchain merely is the proof of services rendered. It's a receipt. I could use it the same way and provide a delivery service of anything, and say that 0.0001 appearing at address X from address Y will signify delivery of your pizza, and if you sign the contract, you agree that is the only proof you need of pizza delivery. Perhaps there was a PS2H set up where, upon arrival with your pizza, I pick up a post it with the other half of the key, and release the 1 mBTC. You now know your pizza has arrived.

There are better ways, just like there are better ways of getting BTC than paypal, but their lack of recognition isn't a problem with a properly-written contract. The problem is with verbal or poorly-written contracts, where it falls on Paypal to figure it out. An airtight contract is not an issue.

I understand what you mean about a contract but I cannot see anyone on e-bay signing a contract when there are others willing to send bitcoin as soon as the payment is made .
Maybe if we put in the description your contract terms and that by bidding on the item you accept blockchain's information as proof of delivery then even if paypal chargeback the money we could have a case in the small claims court .
But getting paypal and e-bay to accept blockchain as official proof would save a lot of uncertainty .

Thank you I'am glad someone else can see my point ,the only thing they focused on in our conversation is the fact that they cannot offer protection since there is no way with normal digital items to prove you got it .
So in most cases the dispute ends up favouring the buyer since the money is the only traceable item, I do feel with enough people contacting them something could come of this .
It really is up to the community as a couple people contacting them will not be enough pressure . I can only talk to them so many times but without help I think it will be a waste of time in the immediate future.

Oh I agree... I guess I'm just being pedantic. So much "all paypal for BTC is scam!!!" threads get to me a bit. I don't do much this way at all, and it seems silly, with PayPal's 2.9%, but some people are just hellbent on using PayPal. Market need, I address it, by creating bulletproof contracts. Of course it'd be more ideal I'd they recognized BTC in the first place. :)

I agree ,I wanted to sell on e-bay simply because it has already done all the marketing is popular and has no minimum sell limit .
But without them officially accepting some form of proof I may as well just give bitcoin away fre lol.

The only way to get people to enter into a contract I can see ,is if I set up a webste ,I was hoping to make small amounts of bitcoin reasonably affordable and accessible for new entrants into this coin.

I would just like to thank any one who actually contacted e-bay .
We have at least got them to adjust their policy regarding the sale of bitcoin.
I noticed that their are currently no bitcoins at all for sale there which is either a wise decision by sellers or a clearout by e-bay .

So come Feb 10th on their UK site which is the one I spoke to ,they will have a dedicated area for selling bitcoin and similar currencies .

Congratulations all !!!!

If you sell any virtual goods, including mining contracts, and use Paypal you will get screwed.

I've talked to 8 sellers this week who got screwed by the same buyer.  She reversed all the Paypal charges for 14 auctions on the same day.  Paypal doesn't care that it's an obvious fraudulent buyer (or a buyer with a hacked Paypal account), Paypal just takes it out on the buyer.

If the buyer loses the Paypal reversal, which is rare for virtual goods, they then dispute the charges with the bank.  Paypal then immediately rules in favor of the buyer even if you won the original case (which is almost impossible for virtual goods).

ebay/paypal for virtual goods is a nightmare.  Some haven't gotten bit.  Some try to use some filters such as verifying an ebay account with good history or matching verified paypal email address to ebay email address... but you will still get bit.  It's just too easy for a buyer to screw the seller and Paypal policies all stacked against the seller.

I just received 3 'unauthorized' disputes today from Paypal and 1 chargeback since my last post this morning.

It's total scammerville on ebay and Paypal.  I feel bad for all of the sellers there right now - if you are selling anythign bitcoin related you will get scammed.  It's not even a "cost of doing business" which is the usual warning to ebay sellers... it's a total outright scamfest.  

Even filtering for ebay accounts that were over 1 year old and verified paypal addresses in the US, I got scammed.  This last scammer had an ebay account that was open in 2004 and verified paypal account.  Learned my lesson, again.

I bought a large sum of btc via paypal from people who did not know me at all,over the last couple of years, I always wondered why anyone was willing to sell it via paypal,but assumed they just needed to log the comms and record blockchain info in case I tried to reverse it. It wouldnt be hard to prove the transaction went through.

You can prove the transaction went through just fine, but that isn't enough evidence for Paypal to rule in your favor. 

Even if you printed a paper wallet and shipped it with delivery confirmation and signature, Paypal still won't rule in your favor.  It's an automatic easy-to-win dispute for the buyer which is why there are so many scammers doing it now.  You also have hacked Paypal accounts where they use BTC to cash out.  They can' t just transfer to other paypal accounts and cash out because eventually there will be a bank account or credit card that connects to a real user (plus Paypal limits on transferring to/from unverified accounts).  But use the Paypal account to buy BTC or other virtual goods (MMO in-game virtual currency) and then you can transfer the virtual goods around without being traced.

I think people are just using PPs weakness to their advantage and using it to score some free coins. It's like a fraud free for all using PP.

I have no doubt they will eventually jump on the bandwagon. At this point they don't understand it completely and they want to make sure they know what they're doing and how to handle it properly when issues arrive. When they see that the whole world is getting into it, they have nothing left to do but join in along with everyone else. All they need is time.

PP won't jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon - never - for one simple reason: no reversibility of transactions.  They can't screw the sellers if they can't control the funds.  I suppose they could create hosted wallets and only allow btc transfers to another PP hosted wallet and then put controls in place on how long it takes to withdraw.  But even if you withdraw funds to a bank account and get it in a few days, PP can still reverse it.  They can't reverse a btc withdrawal to a wallet they don't host.

PP owes some culpability and I'm waiting for their next settlement with state AG's.

Almost all other financial services requires some minimum confirmation before allowing the transaction.  Paypal and ebay try to make it as easy as possible to "one click buy" which means any hackers who comprise a user's ebay account can then buy stuff which the legitimate Paypal owner then later disputes - either directly with Paypal or via their bank/credit card (primary or backup funding sources on Paypal).  

Ebay/Paypal won't add two factor authentication even though it is so easy to do these days with online apps like Google Authenticator or Authy or SMS or many other options.  This would cut down on 90% of the fraud and also go a long ways at helping sellers win cases.  Ebay/Paypal figure the % of sellers that are scammed are relatively low overall  they are willing to let it happen because the revenue gained from "ease of use" far outweighs "dealing with fraud" and then they modify their policies to make the sellers bare all of the risk so they have administrative costs to process claims but aren't out the money - take it from seller accounts.

Unfortunately, even long-time users like me weren't aware of this because we had smaller transactions go fine for years.  But once you venture into any kind of product that is on the scammer's radar, then it's total scamsville.  It's not the odd rotten apple here and there, it's like entering a store full of pickpockets when selling virtual goods on ebay.

They will eventually make their own cryptocurrency ;P

No, no, no. PP execs don't have any desire to screw sellers preferentially. Why would they, as a business that must be desirable enough to both sellers and buyers to be usable? Their contracts with Visa and the rest require them to maintain a certain very low percentage of buyer complaints, however; and those come from consumer protection regulations, mostly.

The first part of that should have been self-evident. The why requires research, which I've summarized for you, since I've done it before. We'll see if you listen, since the first one demonstrates a tendency toward illogical conclusions based on emotion, but I hope that's not the rule.

BTW, you can in fact enable Authy with PayPal, IIRC...?

EDIT: 2FA on PayPal is not GA or Authy compatible but it does exist: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin?cmd=xpt/Marketing_CommandDriven/securitycenter/PayPalSecurityKey-outside&bn_r=o

Yes. But the problem is there's no way for sellers to know this. I'd feel a lot more comfortable knowing the buyer has 2FA obviously. If anyone knows how to check, let me know.

For that 1 year old account, did you make sure the eBay and PayPal account wasn't hacked?

Agreed, that would be very useful. I was not aware that PP chargebacks sellers in the event of hacked accounts. If someone buys a TV with a hacked account, I can't imagine they do anything but try to find the criminal and/or recover the TV. Digital goods as traditionally defined are different for the same logical process that makes piracy different from theft. As neither a TV nor a bitcoin can be copied, bitcoins must be treated like physical goods. I thought the issues with chargebacks involved buyers contesting proof of delivery.

I wouldn't treat them as physical goods. They are unique intangible goods with "unofficial proof of delivery" that aren't recognized by chargeback enforcers. Like I said before Bitcoin is a whole different monster. General guideline is if you're not 95% sure your buyer won't chargeback then don't sell to them. I've sold $2000 in digital goods before to an eBay buyer who had feedback showing a $5000 high-end purchase in their eBay feedback. Establish their identity with some verification techniques to make sure the account isn't hacked and felt my risk was under 5%. Even then I was nervous of the sale. It's never going to be very straightforward and each buyer will be different. I've figured out mostly through experience and of course writing the PayPal Virtual FAQ helps too. You'll always be anxious all the time though. As long as the chargeback window is open. Hard to get a good night's sleep.

There used to be some secret methods on PayPal called Mass Pay that you can tell used bank funds rather then credit card. But it was extremely difficult to get customers to pay that way since they had to have $$$ in their PayPal account. They don't offer that method anymore. Those were some interesting days of who could figure out the PayPal system better then the other.

Wow. I'm an idiot. I should write a Bitcoin Virtual FAQ too. Could probably make some decent money. :)

Here's the PayPal Virtual FAQ I wrote in 2010. It hasn't been updated.
http://virtualfaqs.com/forum/paypal/574-paypal-virtual-faq.html